For Trish, that means starting her days on a less-than-ideal note. “I hate the radio,” she says. But Charlie loves to have it playing in the background when he’s getting ready for his day.

“So [he stipulated that] in the mornings, he has to listen to the radio for at least 20 minutes,” she says. For the good of the couple, Trish says, “I agreed.”

She’s also given him football Sundays, two date nights a week and a daily phone call — lasting at least five minutes.

“Normally, I would have felt suffocated” by that much contact, she says. But the contract helped to take the edge off. “This is just what he likes — [it’s not] about something I did wrong.”

Besides, she points out, Charlie made equally important concessions for her: He’s contractually obligated to support her yearly trips with her best friends, to let her pay for things once in a while and to work on not chewing loudly.

Relationship therapists say that contracts like Trish and Charlie’s can be helpful — depending on how they’re written.

“A long laundry list of annoyances in the form of contractual obligations is not going to fix the relationship,” says Jean Fitzpatrick, a marriage counsellor who works on similar agreements with her clients, usually during premarital counselling.

She believes the trend toward dating contracts likely stems from young couples wanting to split up tasks differently than their parents’ generation did.

The “emotional prenups” Fitzpatrick works on with her clients focus on problems that would necessitate a return to counselling, such as an ongoing conflict or someone not doing their share of chores.

Trish and Charlie recently re-evaluated their contract to reflect new changes in their relationship: moving in together and getting a puppy.

Some highlights: “Charlie needs to stop judging Trish on her choices of nighttime TV”; “[Trish needs to] clean the tub after [she has] a bath, just a quick wipe-down.” It’s helped the new roommates “understand each other’s pet peeves, and who does what [around the house],” she said.

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